Social Bookmarking: Organize, archive, and annotate resources at Diigo and/or Delicious


Where do you keep your bookmarks (favorites)? Are they on one computer? How do you share them? Both of these services allow you to have web-based bookmarks that are public or private, and you can organize them with Tags (keywords).

There are two big social bookmarking tools: delicious and diigo


Delicious

When you find a terrific website, how to you remember it and keep track of it? How do you share it with colleagues?

What makes delicious powerful are:
1. It's web-based
2. Other people who share their discovered resources
3. The tags!

What is delicious?
A place where you can save your save and categorize your bookmarks, and share them with others (or not).

Here is a quick video about how delicious works - CommonCraft Social Bookmarking in Plain English
(Note, the website used to be http://del.icio.us and the service has migrated to delicious.com when Yahoo purchased the service and login is by Yahoo ID. Also, Yahoo is now seeking a buyer for delicious.).

delicious_logo.JPG
delicious_logo.JPG


Management tip! Easily manage delicious by installing the browser toolbar buttons - this will make it a snap to bookmark and tag your resources.

Why use delicious?
  • Your bookmarks aren't tied to one computer
  • Your bookmarks are easily sorted
  • Easy to share resources with others
  • Can add descriptions to saved resources
  • Can discover what resources others find valuable
  • Can search through millions of categorized sites based on keyword - think of it as crowdsourcing your searching for resources

In the classroom
One thing you could consider doing is creating a tag(s) that you would share with students that when they click on that tag, the resources pertinent to them would appear. For example, if I wanted to share the resources related to Spanish I have bookmarked at Delicious with teachers of Spanish, I could give them this URL (or they could click on the "Spanish" tag):
http://delicious.com/ckendall/spanish .

Delicious features
  • Tags - tags are keywords you will use to describe the website. No spaces in tags (so you can't use the tag"differentiated instruction" but you can use "differentiatedinstruction" or "differentiated_instruction" or "DifferentiatedInstruction"
  • Network - think of this as a list of colleagues, friends or buddies - you network will appear in a list, and, you can click on the word network to see a list of all the sites your network has been bookmarking
  • Inbox - sites that others have tagged for you using the tag for:username (for example, for:ckendall) will appear in a list for you. This is a great way for others to call your attention to specific web sites.
  • Subscription - this feature allows you gather all the resources identified with a particular tag.
  • Search box - the delicious search box allows you to search your resources or resources from throughout the entire website.

Alternate social bookmarking site
Many new users find delicious to be adequate, others prefer diigo, which takes all of the above features and adds groups and the ability to make annotations right on the website pages.

Find Cindy Kendall on delicous: http://www.delicious.com/ckendall
Tag a resource for me by using the tag for:ckendall

Diigo

diigo_logo.jpg
What makes Diigo special is its educator features - you can set up accounts for your classroom and students. It is easy to set up groups, enabling you to bookmark resources specifically for particular groups(s). Check the FAQs for educators for all the why and how of using Diigo in education.

You can also join other groups at Diigo (thus a bit of social networking as well), such as the following groups, and then you can receive notifications of what others in the group have bookmarked and/or visit the group's page at Diigo:
Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0

What else can Diigo do? Highlight on the page and keep your notes as well as archive the page so you have it forever!

Here is a wikipage that has just about everything you would want to know about Diigo in education - http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/diigo

Diigo Directions for Students
Quick start guide: external image pdf.png kendall_social_bookmarking_diigo.pdf

Tip: Install the diigo toolbar to make bookmarking simple - and, you can set up diigo to automatically post to your blog, share with particular groups, and even cross post to delicious.

Many new users find delicious to be adequate, others prefer diigo, which takes all of the above features and adds groups.

Diigo Group: Resources for Languages
Diigo Group:Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0
Diigo Groups: technoLanguages A group for resources about world languages, language teaching, language learning, technology in language classrooms
Diigo Group: BSEC German Teachers-Resources for teachers of German

I have an account at both delicious and diigo, and automatically post to both places (this can be set up at diigo in the tools area):
My account at diigo: http://www.diigo.com/user/ckendall